The first thing I thought when I heard the word “parasite” was the show The Strain, where this surge of vampirism hit New York and basically you needed to stay away from the vampires’ blood or not get bitten (which is the most common sense thing in most situations involving vampires) otherwise this parasite thing enters your body and you become infected with this zombie-like vampirism.

Definitely something worth watching if you like those types of shows. I know our dad definitely does.

“Let me try something.” Monroe got up to turn the chair around before sitting back down. He held his hands in front of us, and I noticed something glowing from within his palms. I focused hard on his hands as he brought them up to his face and then over his head. He ran his fingers through his hair, and slowly his hair changed from being the teal color that I grew familiar with to a soft black.

I looked over at Mila, and I swear I had never seen her eyes so wide in my life. Clearly, she saw what he did. Or she was just starstruck with how insanely handsome he was. I wouldn’t blame her if that was the case.

“Did you see that?” Monroe flipped his hair, showing that it was all black. I watched her as she nodded and tried to speak. Then his hair changed back to what it was before right before our eyes—it actually looked a bit lighter than it was—and he tied it back. “She can definitely see magic,” he said.

Mila was still at a loss for words. I was too for a moment, before recalling what he said about Mila being something called a “commoner”.

“This doesn’t make sense, though.” I spoke up. “You said that we have to be born from a magical family or whatever in order to see that kind of thing, right?”

“Yup.” Monroe shrugged, but he agreed.

“Well, there has to be another reason, I told Monroe. “Mila and I have been home-schooled from kindergarten to, well, now. Not once were we ever taught about magic or anything involving the supernatural at any point of our time in school.”

Memories of our dad and his fascination with these sorts of things suddenly popped up in my mind. “I-I mean, unless you count our dad having us watch hours upon hours of TV shows and movies and read stories about that kind of stuff as “learning”, then I guess we learned about the supernatural.”

Monroe raised a brow at me again. “Your dad?”

I nodded, and the memories slipped from my mind almost instantly. “He’s just a huge fan of that stuff. But that’s besides the point, ‘cause everything I know about vampires has basically been a complete lie. All those stories we read and those shows and movies we watched are all completely different from actually being a vampire, and I’m speaking from experience here.”

I noticed Monroe had this look like he was piecing everything together, whatever the “everything” is. I didn’t know, and I’m usually good at this sort of thing.

“Oh my god.” Mila grabbed my shoulder again, but this time, she only held it. Tightly. It was starting to hurt a bit.

I looked over at her. “What?”

“Dad’s obsession.” This was all she said, almost like I was supposed to understand.

I tried to think of what our dad had to do with Mila’s sudden ability to see supernatural things, and then it hit me: 

Our dad was insanely obsessed with the supernatural. He basically spent his whole life studying supernatural creatures, and when Mila and I were really young he would tell us all these weird facts and stories about them. He’d have us watch all these different shows and movies growing up, as well as read all these different books while we were home-schooled, and he would even let us read some of his own writings.

He even had us watch Supernatural, that show with the Winchester brothers, because he liked how the writers included all these different creatures and beings (and I swear he was probably in love with Jared Padalecki).

I always believed our dad was just this huge nerd who loved everything supernatural-related. Now, with everything that has happened and all the people I’ve met, I’m starting to understand why our dad took this job in the first place. It made me wonder if our mom knew about this.

“Well that was an… interesting little revelation that just happened.” Monroe wasn’t even hiding the sarcasm when saying this. “I was starting to think that you wouldn’t get that soon enough.”

Gee, thanks Monroe.

“If our dad is supernatural or whatever, then why couldn’t he have told us?” Mila was thinking out loud as she said this. I knew she was because she was mostly mumbling to herself as she was talking, and she looked like she was staring off into space as if trying to search for an answer from inside her subconscious.

I couldn’t help but to agree with Mila, because it didn’t make sense. But I didn’t want to think about anything else anymore. I didn’t think I could handle it, with everything else that was on my mind.

“I think I wanna lay back down, again,” I told Mila and Monroe.

Monroe looked concerned. “Not feeling well?”

I shrugged, and I slowly felt myself just collapse into the bed with a sigh.

Mila got up as Monroe motioned to the door and they both walked out. They looked unsure if they should leave me alone again, especially Mila. But she looked just about the same as she did when she saw my “vampire form”, or whatever the hell that was.

I just wanted to lay down and forget everything that just transpired in the past few hours, or back to before my untimely death. So I let out another sigh and closed my eyes, and I just stopped thinking.

—

About three days later, I’m woken up by Mila shoving me out of Travis’ bed. I nearly forgot I was a vampire, so the urge to drink blood had caught me by surprise.

Mila probably knew I would need to drink, so she tossed a juice box at me. “Drink up,” she told me. “We’re going somewhere.”

I still hadn’t fully processed my being awake yet. What time was it? What day was it? Where were we going? Much was left unanswered for the time being.